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Growing up in New York, I've seen hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of Broadway shows.
Now working backstage is the absolute best thing that I can imagine.
My journey to Broadway was probably a little
different than most people. I went to school as a fine arts painting major.
I left college a year and a half in to pursue my dream to work in theater.
I still paint. To me when I am doing makeup my inspirations come from art.
I just adapted into a different canvas.
I was working for a theater company out in Long Island for about four years and
I was pretty much a slave for them. Whatever they needed, I was really there to do.
So that was kind of my college experience, and after that I started
working for MAC cosmetics for the next four and a half years.
One day I got a phone call from a friend of mine. He was hired to do the hair and makeup for
a Vanity Fair photo shoot for the show "Ends of the Rainbow' and it was the show
that changed my entire life because I came in. I did the makeup for Tracy
Bennett to transform the blue-eyed blonde-haired British woman into Judy Garland.
From there I have worked on approximately twelve other shows.
I was doing 10 shows a week and as grueling as it was, I was able to meet so
many people in the business.
My mentor on Broadway John Jordan help me get my contacts on Broadway.
He is currently the hair supervisor on The Lion King.
One of the biggest things that I learned was not to be crazy, to go in, do my job
show up, not cause drama.
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A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. I worked with Linda Cho who is the Tony Award
winner for the costumes for the show. She had this very high fashion
stylized version of what 1909 really looked like.
When I'm building a character for a show,
I'm going off of the script, the director's note, and mainly I go off of the hair and costume
designer, because they are the one's creating a vision.
I'm there to figure out what they're really looking for because they
understand the clothing but I'm there to figure out exactly what their faces should look like.
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We had one character played by Jefferson Mays, originally.
He played eight characters throughout the show and his changes happen between five minutes
and they came down to about 17 seconds.
[Dialogue: Remembering the climax of the play...]
My biggest challenge for the D'Ysquith role was trying to keep his lip from not being torn apart
or bleeding because every scene would be a change and he would have to reapply makeup and then
take it off and reapply makeup or it's the removal of glue from a mustache.
[Dialogue: Shot herself. In the temple. Shot herself...]
Because the role is so demanding anyone who is in that track always seems to be a huge sweater.
There are different layers of makeup and powder that we've used that help keeping
sweat completely off their face.
The D'Ysquith family role changes 8 different times, 8 different characters
with seventeen different times that he is changing into those roles and it can be
as easy as a mustache being applied. Or there's blush and lip gloss that's added
for certain characters. They're tiny elements that are added or taken away.
For each of those characters that we've designed for.
Though he has a very basic plot that he goes off of.
There is a part of the show where Jefferson would stick
out his tongue. He had this idea.
He now has his dresser go out by him beet juice and the beet juice dies his tongue.
It really helped him find that character as well.
[applause]
One of the times that I see a character really come to life is with Miss Barley.
We change her lips.
They are glittered. It's the only thing that is shiny in the entire show.
Now that the show is running on tour
when she comes off stage we take a piece of duct tape and she pretty much kisses
the duct tape. It removes a lot of glitter.
It was really the easiest and quickest way to do it
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For a show like Gentleman's Guide, there's no makeup artist as on staff each night.
So I went in to teach every single person
their makeup plot, and even understudies or swings.
They all get face charts that will help them go through the looks when they
can't really have me there to help them.
It really plots out exactly where the makeup belongs.
These are the original face charts from the Broadway production.
Each cast member gets a copy of and that's what they execute these designs with each night.
Lot of times they hang them right on their mirror so it gives them a good reference to go off.
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The makeup and hair supervisor that's on the show
does keep in check with making sure that everyone is fully stocked with makeup.
I do pop in probably every other week or so.
I just take a quick look at the show make sure that everyone looks good.
If there's ever a problem or something is going on I may contact the actor and
get them a tip or trick to help them get back to where we want them to be.
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Adapting to an actor no matter what they have a requirement about is definitely my goal.
I want to make sure that they are taken care of and knowing if they're allergic
to latex so making sure that lashes to be applied and they're not gonna have an
issue is always a very big question that I always ask when i'm meeting with an
actor to find out what they're about.
Catherine currently plays Phoebe D'Ysquith in A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder.
When doing Catherines makeup I'm all about the contours and creating these smoky eyes.
It gives her definition and helps her performance.
I really love blending these colors and making sure that the eyeshadows look really smooth.
Because you have actors that are an inch away from her that we want them to be in
the moment, but then we also need to make sure that in the last row, they can see
it exactly the same way when I'm doing this.
It's really just beautiful.
It was a learning curve though. I will say that.
Mostly I think the eyes are the trickiest thing.
I think I get nervous when precision is involved.
But I definitely feel more comfortable now then when we started for sure.
When I first started the show I was in the ensemble, and I played the role of Miss Barley.
But I was also understudying both Phoebe and Sibella
so I had to learn all of those makeup tracks.
It was definitely a challenge, but really fun to get to play with all of those different looks.
Miss Barley with the glitter and like apple red cheeks... that was just an extreme, really fun look.
The final touches when you're preparing to be a a new character when
you get into makeup hair and costume.
Everything comes together. Just having all of those elements working so
beautifully together is a real treat.
That's the whole look.
It's the eye details that I haven't nailed.
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Most shows they don't really give you a budget, but they don't tell you yes or no about it either.
Something like Gentleman's Guide, I was there to execute the look and whatever
that look cost is what we went for.
I think that just having so many different people around me in the business and
going through costume designers sketchbooks, seeing all different ideas of
what people had are really the inspiration that derives my looks that I do for shows.
The best advice that I can give it an aspiring makeup artists is to get yourself out there.
To never say no to any project. I think I''ve done more
free events in my entire career and now that I am getting paid for them
there's a reason behind it. You know, I pounded the pavement and I made sure
that I put my time in to get where I am now.
[Music]
I'm the production makeup supervisor for The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and
and all the other companies in the U.S.
And look. This is the wax that I will be using on the Phantom tonight.
I dig my finger in here, take this out and I blank out his eyebrow.
We officially opened to the public in 1988,
so that's twenty eight years already past. We're now in our twenty ninth year.
I was doing a show in another theater with a woman and she said to me,
"Oh, I know somebody who wants to work with you."
So she said, "Come and go to the theater and meet my friend."
I didn't have a clue who the first one was so went over to the theater with her,
and the guy said, "I like your work and I'm doing this show;
it's Phantom of the Opera and I want you to come and work with me.
You have two weeks to make your decision." And because I was just finishing school
and I had student loans, I said, "I'll take the job!"
So Vinny, I'd like to see what ball caps you have today. and these are my
These are my Phantom caps?
Yep.
I like to check them to make sure that they're not too thin, for one, and that they're big enough
and pliable enough so I can put it on the head.
Sometimes if they don't have enough elasticity they will break, they will rip when I put them on.
I cast it like this and it's perfect.
Most makeup artists on Broadway don't stay with the show.
They set up the shows and then they go off and do other things.
But Phantom of the Opera happened to be one of the most fabulous shows
that employs makeup artists all over the world.
You have to have a makeup artist there, because it involves prosthetics, ball caps, and special paintings.
And the actor cannot do that by him or herself.
I'm taking this and I'm taking these.
I use many different products.
Back then, we used a lot more pancake, which is water based, and now we use everything.
Airbrush... Some makeups already come with everything in it, which means
that you don't have to put a primer on first; it might already have it in it.
And we have things like anti-shine; we didn't have such a product back then when I started, that I know of.
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Makeup artists need to be able to understand the skin, understand the coloration.
You have to be able to cancel the colors that you don't want and put the new colors over it.
You have to have a library at your house as well, because if you get called in the middle of the night
to do something, you have to know how to.
If you don't know how to, you pull the books out and you read them
because the word is "cosmetology" and it's a science of the skin, the hair and the nails.
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My first job in makeup was I was working in a salon and it was a salon where a lot of celebrities
would come to get their hair done.
And one day, another hair stylist, Stanley James, said, "You want to come to work with me today?"
and I said, "I can?" He said, "Yes, grab your bag."
and I grab my bag and I look back, and I've been working ever since.
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When I mentor young people, which I do very often, I make sure that I give them the basics.
I teach them what they need to know for this business; even as much as how you enter the door.
The door man, when you see him there, you don't just walk by, you have to speak to him.
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And when you get down to your room you make sure you say, "Hello, everyone. How are you today?"
We're always very pleasant.
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My first advice to them; go to school, study.
They have a lot of information on YouTube today, but I still think the classroom is very important
because when you get out here, you still have to deal with personalities and people
and not everybody is smiley, happy-go-lucky.
You have to be prepared spiritually and mentally so that when the time comes,
you meet upon a rough patch, you have to be able to handle the situation without being panicked.
This helps to speed up the process of the makeup if I prep all of this before he sits in the chair,
then by the time I'm ready to use it, it's tacky enough.
The makeup could be designed by either the costume designer; they could say,
"This is what I want with this character.", or it could be that the director said
he sees it a different way, and then it's for you then to be able to give them the colors that they want.
So if you're working, let's say for example, on one of our auctioneers,
they said, "We want the auctioneer to look kind of like gaudy, like dark eyes...",
you have to give them the dark eyes and the dark cheek and the sunken bones, things like that.
You come back in and you sit down and you apply it on the actor's face
and then you have the actor then clean it off and then we do it so that the actor can do it by himself eventually.
We go through the makeup process for a couple times before they actually have to go on stage
and then they can practice their make up when they're off stage
so when they go on, they feel more comfortable in their role.
And then, that might be all the person sees of you until you come back again to replenish the makeup room.
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To transform the actor into the Phantom of the Opera for the night,
I apply a ball cap and three pieces of prosthetics.
We make sure the skin is clean and is conditioned because we use glues, so that when we remove it,
the person has to come in the next day; we do the same thing over and over and over
so you want to make sure that you have good cleansers for the skin and things like that.
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Chris Tucker did the sculpting, he did the casting and he sent me the pieces. They're blank
and then I have the interpretation of different colors for how Chris wants him to look on stage.
There've been fifteen Phantoms but there are many understudies and all the actors, as well,
so that's a lot of people.
We've had black Phantoms and we've had black Carlottas.
Different people, different skin. We have Asians in the company, some Spanish, things like that.
You have to be able to to basically understand the color and this person's skin.
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